During these two days of exams, Shen Mingquan, like all the other eagerly waiting parents, braved the cold wind to rush back and forth between the county seat and the commune.
He had been at the Xiangyang Team at noon, but by around three in the afternoon, he was waiting outside the county high school gates with other old friends, all for their children to emerge.
The weather was already quite cold, and his children worried he would freeze. So, he had tucked a military-issue canteen filled with hot water inside his coat to keep warm while he waited.
When his children came out, he could immediately hand them the canteen so they could take a sip of water. That would be the quickest way to shut those little rascals up.
Otherwise, those little rascals would start nagging endlessly with a mountain of nonsense, like 'I'm not a child anymore,' or 'What if I did poorly on the exam and you collapsed from waiting out here?'
